In part one of this two-part series I shared some key takeaways from the recent forum, “Digital Asia: Asia’s Digitally Transforming Economies”, hosted by The Economist Corporate Network in Hong Kong.

As discussed in my last post, digital transformation is growing fast around Asia-Pacific, thanks to the explosive growth of the internet, mobile penetration, FinTech and big data.

In this blog post I want to highlight some of the things companies need to think about when it comes to responding to the huge opportunity presented by digital transformation in Asia-Pacific. Here a few things to consider:

Digital Transformation Demands Digital Ecosystems

In order to digitally transform, enterprises need access to diversified ecosystems where they can connect with other companies and share data immediately and locally, generating commercial value for better decision making. By distributing data and workloads to the edge, companies can position hubs close to major business centers and roaming users, letting businesses and governments directly interconnect to data sources, local data lakes, clouds, and enterprise analytics engines.

Equinix has been supporting Network Service Providers (NSP) in upgrading their infrastructures, transforming service delivery and enabling new digital services. By joining the Equinix ecosystem, these providers have gained access to more than 9,800 potential customers, including specialized cloud and financial ecosystems.

Companies can also benefit from these digital ecosystems to deliver immediate actions and optimal user experience. For example, e-commerce portals are able to connect to payment service providers for transactions, logistic companies for product delivery, and manufacturers for product production – with all these interactions taking place in real-time to keep pace with consumer demands.

Interconnection Keeps Companies Agile

In today’s fast-paced economy, real-time, secure collaboration across different vendors is essential. However, businesses can no longer rely on the public internet to realize this collaboration in the digital era.

By connecting over private, decentralized networks, companies can protect data, whilst still meeting customer expectations for digitization. The second volume of our Global Interconnection Index also indicated the growing demand for private connection in Asia-Pacific, with Interconnection Bandwidth expected to grow at a 51% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) to 2,200+ Tbps by 2021.

To better support the digital transformation of Hong Kong’s workplaces, Ricoh has been evolving its product portfolio to be more dynamic and agile. By deploying in one of Equinix’s International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data centers in Hong Kong, Ricoh has been able to flexibly create direct connections to more than 110 cloud service providers (CSP), meaning it is now able to deliver a hybrid cloud architecture for its Smart BackUp as a Service and Business Process Management Solutions. By moving to an interconnected platform, Ricoh has been able to rapidly scale its service delivery and continue its roadmap towards building additional SaaS applications.

Make the Move to the Digital Edge

Today’s internet services are delivered by a wide variety of internet service providers. These providers need the support of robust multi-tenant interconnection platform partners that enable them to come together at the digital edge to address the growing demand for global data exchange. Therefore, a dense interconnected network environment, a competitive marketplace and open, vendor-neutral ecosystems are foundational for digital economies. They can help to improve performance for providers that require low-latency connections to reach end users at the speeds they expect.

Businesses can leverage distributed networks at the edge to enable fast access to data, both locally and globally. This minimizes bandwidth costs by localizing traffic and connecting applications in multiple locations to improve user experience, whilst reducing latency and interconnecting multiple networks and clouds.

An edge-forward architecture can enable the simplification of networks, allowing for localized, segmented and optimized network traffic flows, bringing WAN and LAN together at the edge, and creating high-performance, scalable infrastructure designed to support increased mobile data traffic.

Australia’s largest online automotive classifieds business, carsales, is an example of a company that needed to deliver a consistent, high-quality global experience to its customers, as it began to expand overseas and face integration challenges. carsales embraced an Interconnection Oriented Architecture™ (IOA™) approach to transform its global infrastructure for scale, performance and growth. It chose the Equinix IBX® data center in Melbourne to host its core applications. This provided access to Equinix’s highly-connected global platform bringing data and applications closer to users and key technology partners, all while leveraging the integration of Equinix Cloud Exchange Fabric™ (ECX Fabric™) and Telstra Programmable Network (TPN) for secure on-demand connectivity.

The IOA approach localizes traffic and services across all the locations and markets companies need to reach, and regionalizes services globally. By shortening the physical distance between global applications, data, customers and employees, IOA shifts the fundamental IT delivery architecture from siloed and centralized to interconnected and distributed, regardless of location. With Equinix, carsales has in place the infrastructure it needs to succeed now and in the future, and has been able to distribute its IT offerings across all regions, helping it to drive operational efficiencies, improve economies of scale, and positioning the company for business growth.

Time to Transform

Consumer and enterprise expectations are rising, as they demand a better digital experience. Businesses that are on the cusp of transforming markets in their favor and gaining access to massive new customer bases are also leveraging every tool at their disposal. All these interactions require quick, seamless and secure data connection between every individual and unit.

At the center of this, interconnection serves as the foundation for businesses to maximize and realize the potential of digital transformation, and eventually drive higher profitability, and better customer experience.

Download the IOA Playbook to learn more about how an interconnection-first approach can help you embrace digital transformation.